Things got worse from bad. I was already going through depression and anxiety, but now I had to also deal with losing my friendship with my best friend, excessive pressure from my family, and messed up academics and self. But the biggest challenge of this all was dealing with the loss of friendship that I cherished so much. I always valued people and relationships, so things like family and friends mattered to me a lot more than anything else. The result of this was I continued to stay isolated from others, which started with the onset of my depression and anxiety, by closing myself off to the world both literally, by staying in my room, and figuratively, by not talking to anyone, and resigning myself to this reality by not caring about anything anymore. It seemed like my small world shattered.
During that time, doing even basic things like eating got really hard for me, as I wouldn’t go out of my room to even buy, so things like academics and assignments were really out of the picture at this point. I stayed in my room and did the only thing I knew best- watch anime. I would just be there, lying on the bed or the couch of the common area, and watch anime or youtube for hours. And by hours, I mean a lot of hours, around 12 hours a day. I would spend the rest of my time sleeping. I would starve for 2 to 3 days as I didn’t want to go out or be seen by others. It’s not that I wanted watch anime or youtube, but I just didn’t know what else to do with myself. It wasn’t that I totally lost control or anything, but this was a conscious choice on my part, I was aware of this, but I was just very stubborn, hurt, and closed to everything and everyone. The real problem was not the situation itself but me who didn’t want to do anything about anything anymore and just made things worse and worse each day. I could have been out of my room and done better if I tried, I am sure, but I never did because I lost my will to do so. All these things would’ve been hard to handle by themselves, but together they were on a completely different level as I no longer cared about getting myself out of this situation where I felt so hopeless, empty, lost, and sad.
Things started to change for real when one day I had a moment of pause. My eyes were very tired after relentlessly watching anime for hours, so I had to give them some rest. During this time, I had a break, or pause you could say, of around one to two hours of just me thinking. This gave me the time I needed, as I would watch anime without breaks for hours. I thought to myself, enough. I don’t want to continue like this more anymore. I then immediately put my phone away, took a shower, and went for getting lunch. That gave me the initial push, the energy, to be out of my room for the first time. Previously, I had my friend supporting me through all this, as he stayed, talked, and worked with me through this, but it just didn’t last as I didn’t have a will of myself. But things started to change slowly and now his support was actually being effective for a longer time. One good thing that came out of him helping throughout was that he actually made me book an appointment with a mental health consuelor at the starting stages of all this, which didn’t have any immediate benefits then, but eventually helped me understand the problem. It turns out that I was being stubborn, locking myself in my room, not doing anything, etc…, as I was grieving. And this really helped me make sense of what was happening. My other friend also really helped me through this, although he came a bit later. He is a Phd student, who was also a student at NYUAD, and he guided me on life and academics. He told me to get moses center accomodation, which greatly helped me in relieving some burden of academics as I got extensions for assignments, etc... Both of them really helped me to slowly get back on track.
But things didn’t stay that way for too long. I totally messed up again after messing up a little when I had 5 assignments of probability and statistics due on the same day (I got extensions for all those assignments from professor). I couldn’t do them all obviously, but I felt sad again so I went back to anime and youtube again. This quickly escalated as I was very susceptible to small things going wrong. I took that and made into a big mess, and the whole week going forward was spent by me locking myself again in my room. This alternative turn of events went on for quite sometime, but I learned a crucial lesson out this- that I will fail, again, and again, and again. I was trying to come up with counter measures of how not to fail, and let these things happen again, but I realized that I couldn’t avoid failing, eventually. In order to move forward and succeed, I realized I needed to fail less and less and succeed more and more.
Things got better overall, thanks to the help from my friends and my changed stance on my situation, but I found a sense of closure, and truly moved on from my past by accepting it when I found a goal for myself, the thing I want to do in life. I was on the lookout for what I want to do in life, as I realized I didn’t want to do Computer Science or be a software engineer. One day, as I was going through youtube, watching an analysis video on government and politics, I came across a video about how a chief minister, governor equivalent, changed a state in India. The more I learned about that, the more I got inspired. I was always interested in sustainability and development, and I wanted to solve all the world’s problems together with people, but I didn’t know how to do that. But this really clicked with me as it showed me how to do that. I realized the impact a government can have on its people, when I saw the CM of Delhi, through videos on youtube, made a real change. He fixed education in government schools and made them on par with the private ones, made healthcare free for everyone, gave free water, electricity upto 200 Watts, and even made transportation for women free in buses.And now I had a dream or goal: to build an oranization that would help governments around the world to do their job.
As a result of finding my goal, I was now actually look forward to the future. I went on a majors exploration hunt and found SRPP (Social Research and Public Policy) to be the most relevant major. But due to its problems with employability, I ultimately chose to switch to BOS (business, organization, and society) major, a more realstic aswell as an idealistic approach (as it stayed aligned with my goals).
This, is not just my story, but a story of everyone who has lost something precious to them. The story of people who couldn’t deal with things any longer or the story of people who find the challenges of life just too hard to deal with at the moment. Here’s my message to you:
- Reach out to people when you can’t help yourself out.
- Never abandon the small things in life. Take those small steps and do those tiny little things.
- PAUSE. If you can’t go the right way anymore, and if you can’t stop from going the wrong way, pause. It gives you the time to think and act instead of react.
- Have goals, they add meaning to life. So even if you lost meaning in your life, you can add meaning to it.
These things matter because as the saying goes, “nothing changes until nothing changes.” So unless you do something about things, they are going to be the same. It matters that you act now because your parents and friends can help, but they can’t live your life for you. If you won’t act for yourself, who will and when?